


The Demon of The Dacite Church

by Spudato



Series: Bunfeed Bunsolved AU [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Based On Buzzfeed Unsolved, Multi, Other, Paranormal Investigators, queer writing by a queer writer for queer readers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 18:53:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19409302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spudato/pseuds/Spudato
Summary: Velvet loves a good search for ghosts. Her vlogging channel's gotten pretty well known for her exploration of weird places, and Dacite Church seems a ripe place for her to document. Yet, as she and Blake approach it with cameras in hand, strange things begin to happen and odd lights begin to appear, and Velvet starts to debate what might kill them both first: the infamous goat demon that resides there, or their own dang stupidity.





	The Demon of The Dacite Church

**Author's Note:**

> yes this was based off buzzfeed unsolved because i finally took the time to watch it!!! and then we made jokes on the ol' discord abt... well, that'd be spoilers. but u'll kno what we were joking abt once u finish the fic :3c

“Hey everyone! So, um, it’s been a _while_ since I last did one of these sorts of videos--”

“For good reason.”

“Shush your whole mouth. Anyway, a ton of my subscribers have kinda been following me after those couple of videos I did where I wandered around haunted places to see if I got, like, mauled by a fuckin’ ghost or some shit, and I know a few of you wanted me to do another.”

“Shout-out to that one bitch who shoved Velvet into a ton of nettles!”

“Rest in fucking peace, asshole, I’m still kicking. So, yeah, basically, it turns out that not _crazy_ far from where Blake and I live is a, like, abandoned church out in the forest--”

“Because _that_ doesn’t sound like a place where we will both most definitely die--”

“--And according to local sightings, there’s been this rumour that there’s some sort of demon who looks a bit like a goat, who was summoned by the, uh, congregation. Long story short, goat demon got summoned, congregation got slaughtered, and now the demon sticks around to chase people off.”

“The goooooooooat demooooooon--”

“So, really, it leaves us no choice but to go to said old-ass, creepy-ass, haunted-ass church in the middle of the forest in the dead of fuckin’ night, because this? This I _gotta_ see. That’s where we’re gettin’ ready to go now.”

“Great, cool, nice. When I die, I will leave you with nothing.”

“And here I was, holding out hope for your entire erotica collection. You got some first-editions in there--”

“Can you even say that without getting demonetised?”

“Oh!”

“What?”

 _“Demon-_ etised. I see what you did there.”

“Gods, I hope this goat demon kills us fast. I hope you get killed first.”

“I wish the same every day of my life, babe. So, anyway, we’ll tune in with you guys again once we’re near the church, and, uh, see what we can see!”

* * *

Velvet’s never given ghost stories a whole lot of stock, to be perfectly honest.

Well, okay, she doesn’t dismiss them all outright. Tribal religion might be ancient, but with ancient things come fragments of truth, and just because her clan isn’t as devout as others doesn’t mean she’ll start going around cursing the family spirits, lest she get her ass royally kicked to kingdom come. Still, all this just means she’s not quite the type to leap at the cracking of a twig or the shift of an innocuous bush, eager to make the jump to a supernatural conclusion. As her mother had once said, ghosts -- real ghosts -- are more complicated than just aggravated souls who’re chained down to the mortal realm, and that most stories people share are really just that; stories, powered by overactive imaginations once the fear sunk too deep.

So that was Velvet’s opinion on ghosts. Demons, though? She really didn’t give a flying fuck about supposed _demons._

“So, we agree that demons don’t exist, right?” Blake asks as they drive down towards the edge of the Emerald Forest, the sun just beginning to dip down past the horizon to cast the world in a soft, lilac glow of twilight. By the time they park and get their equipment sorted, it would be nearly pitch black. “They don’t even _exist_ in our mythology, yeah?”

Velvet scoffs, flicking through her photo gallery on her Scroll idly as she watches her signal to the CCT tick down. It’s mostly a rhetorical question, but she answers it anyway. “They don’t, no, but humans based them all _off_ ours. Thought we were the ones worshipping demons with our heathen ways.”

Blake rolls their eyes, and as another lone car passes by them, headlights aglow, they squint over the steering wheel at the narrow road beyond. Their face is lit up for a moment, causing yellow eyes to glow a pale, iridescent green, and then the car drives past and they’re left alone, the dark edge of the forest coming ever closer. “You said this church or whatever, it’s for doing exactly that, right? Built by other Faunus for the Hallows?”

Flipping over to her messages, Velvet scans the last few sent by her trusty _informant_ \-- aka Sun Wukong, ghost-documentary-watcher and Infopedia-whizz extraordinaire. Judging from the sheer metric ton of photos and forum posts and articles he’d sent in a flurry about it, Velvet has no doubt in her mind that this church really does exist in the southern end of the Emerald Forest. What she doubted, quite heavily, was everything else. “Actually, it was built just for the worship of one. Dacite, the Hallow of War.” She blinks, then, and scrolls back up. “Or the Hallow of Resurrection. Sun kinda jumped between ‘em.”

Blake hums, amd then their silken ears flick back up with a sound of realisation. “Oh, I think I know that one. They, uh… I think they killed a human army and used, like, their souls to resurrect a bunch of Faunus or something.”

“Something like that, I think.”

The road beneath the car turns rough, roaring right through the vehicle, and Blake frowns. “Gonna do a, like, voiceover or something? With the hot lore?”

Velvet clears her throat. “Yeah, lemme-- okay, lemme do a quick, like, example and you can tell me how it sounds.”

“Okay, go for it.”

So, according to her informant (and his direct copy-paste from Infopedia), Dacite had been the sole survivor of a Faunus army attempting to defend their tribelands from encroaching humans, who wanted to invade the land for a variety of resources. The human army -- with greater numbers and weapons alike -- had killed every Faunus in their path, but Dacite, in a fit of rage, began to methodically slaughter enough humans to match Faunus losses one-to-one, before using their souls as sacrifice to resurrect their kin in a show of divine power. Then, after the Faunus were able to win the battle against vastly depleted humans forces, Dacite had been crowned a Hallow -- a Faunus with otherworldly powers -- who would, upon death, become part of the landscape of Remnant itself.

Velvet was less familiar with this tale than of others, such as the Hallow of the Storm or the Hallow of Clanhood, but it was truly no wonder why Dacite had an entire church dedicated to their name given all they represented. Even Velvet could think of a few teenagers lost too young who she wouldn’t think twice about bringing back, if ever given the chance, if only to push them back into the arms of their loved ones. To Faunus desperate for hope, Dacite was an emblem of rage, of strength, of overcoming the impossible.

“So,” Velvet says, rolling her shoulders. “How was that?”

Blake doesn’t reply, at first, eyes focused straight ahead, and then their ears fold back and they let out a breath. “Think those humans deserved it?”

Pursing her lips, Velvet stares out the window, watching the city begin to turn into a light-speckled silhouette in the distance. “Probably.”

Blake coughs out a laugh, and the last light from the sun withers, and fades, and dies.

* * *

“Okay, so we’re here--”

 _“‘Here’_ being… where, exactly?”

“We are right by the southern, erm, _bit_ of the Emerald Forest that sorta cups around Vale, and we’re currently in the densest part of the trail that usually would take us in a big ol’ loopy-loop to the car park about five minutes down the way. We, however, are gonna be going a different way, ‘cause this church is about a ten, fifteen minute trek that-a-way--”

“Wait, hold on, bitch, you want me to walk for _ten fuckin’ minutes_ into a _dark forest--”_

“Like, ten minutes from the _edge!_ But we’ve driven in a little bit, so it’ll maybe take less time than that! But we do gotta go off this trail ‘cause this church is pretty remote and pretty hidden. The folks who built it, like, obviously didn’t have permission--”

“Yeah, like they were gonna go _ask_ the council, like, ‘hey everyone, mind if we build a church for our heathenistic Hallow out in the sticks?’”

“Hey, you never know! Maybe they tried to be polite!”

“Maybe. Still, I gotta say, we’ve been out here for a hot two minutes and I’m already feelin’ weirded out.”

“You were the one tellin’ me that demons don’t exist!”

“I’m not weirded out over demons, I’m weirded out by standing in the middle of a dark forest at eleven thirty-seven at night, thank you very much.”

“I mean, huge mood, but we do what we must for the supernatural sciences, which means following the non-existent track off to the south, south-west. The church is apparently pretty distinctive, and rumour says you should know when you’re close by hearing, like, singing, or something?”

“Oh goody, that’s _exactly_ what I wanted to hear.”

“Yeah, should be, like, singing or chanting or hymns or what have you. Only reason this place isn’t even more documented than it already is is ‘cause it’s kinda hard to get to. It’s pretty much dead centre of the wildest part of this whole forest, so we’re gonna have to really hike it.”

“We’re gonna fall in a ditch and die before we even see a solitary ass hair on this demon, huh?”

“It’s all part of the adventure! Let’s go!”

* * *

“Gods,” Blake huffs, throwing a leg over a fallen tree truck as they clamber over, what little pathway the grass had formed already lost to the undergrowth. Slick moss has left a damp mark on their shirt, which they tut at once both feet are back on solid ground. “How did people even find this place if it’s quite literally in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, anyway?”

Velvet shrugs, looking about with her torch. “Sun said that in the winter, once the trees shed their leaves, the steeple’s pretty easy to spot from a distance. Getting to it is still a bit of a maze, though. Like, we’re already fuckin’ struggling and I can still see the car from here.” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder, and true to her word, the very top of the roof of Blake’s car is still just about visible from the side of the trail, a good few paces from being totally out of sight. “It’s easy to get turned around, too. This whole forest looks the damn same no matter what angle you come at it from.”

With a click, Blake turns their torch on and swings it up towards the trees overhead, lighting up boughs heavy with leaves before they look down to the thicket that surrounds them on every side, blocking any clear path. Most of the forest is littered with paths and maps to lead hikers from one end of the forest to the other, but the grass here has grown tall about Velvet’s shins, stagnant pools of mushroom-dotted rainwater sat onto saturated ground, and there’s no marker out here to guide the way. Well, not like Velvet’s expecting some neon sign out here to read ‘this way to the goat church’, but the thought stands. Still, she can’t quite stop her ears from flicking this way and that, thinking of Sun mentioning the singing and the hymns, and she strains to hear even a single ghostly note.

“Haven’t heard a damn thing so far,” Blake muses aloud, and from the way their ears swivel about, they’re likely listening out for the exact same thing. “Shall we get a move on and see if that changes?”

Taking in a breath, Velvet nods.

* * *

“So, outside of the singing, there’s a coupla other things that people have reported seeing.”

“Such as?”

“Apparently, people have said they’ve been followed by an extra pair of footsteps as they came closer to the church, as well as reporting lights flickering from the direction of the place, too. Most people said it felt like another person was sorta near them, y’know?”

“And what about goat sightings? Demon sightings? Goat demon sightings?”

“Are you inquiring about _just_ goat sightings? Like, regular li’l--”

“I mean, it’d probably improve _my_ mood.”

“That’s fair. Well, as far as I’ve heard, the goat demon’s kinda known for a coupla things. One, of course, are the goat horns themselves. Sometimes they’re spotted in the trees, sorta moving around, bobbing up and down.”

“Yeah?”

“And the other one is, like, much like the flickering lights in the distance, you’ll see, like, glowing eyes in the forest, watching you--”

* * *

“Wait. Waaaaaaait, wait, wait.” Blake stops their stride all at once, and when both feet squelch against the soft mud, they wince. They’re deeper into the forest now, struggling their way over thorn-clawed bushes and twisting roots, and more than once Velvet’s sworn she’s spotted the steeple in the distance, glimpsed between the branches above. “Glowing eyes? Goat horns? This isn’t some poor Faunus bastard tryna live out here, gettin’ bothered by the locals, right?”

The incredulousness in their voice makes Velvet bark out a laugh, loud enough to echo around them, and if there’s another ghost hunter out in the forest looking for the same thing they are, she’s probably made the cut into their final ‘PROOF OF GHOSTS’ reel. “Honestly, no lie, I thought the same thing. Still, all the photos show that the church is pretty barren, and there’s nobody living out here for miles. It’s been that way a pretty long time.”

“Oh?” Blake looks over, and the torch passes over Velvet’s face for a split-second. “Gimme that voiceover lore, baby.”

“Alright, alright.” Velvet steps over another fallen branch, her shoe slipping over a wet patch of moss, and she takes in a breath. “So, it goes something like this, I guess.”

If the locals were to be believed, the church had been found empty by the time it was ever really discovered outside the circle of devotees who’d built it. Save for the wooden pews and stacks of water-damaged books, the place had been stripped down to bare stone, with barely any evidence left that people had ever worshipped there. From the photography Velvet had been sent, the place had quirked her interest; she likes abandoned places, regardless of whatever ghosts or demons apparently reside there, because the atmosphere’s hard to find anywhere else. Seeing a place built out of piety left to rot to time holds a considerable amount of appeal, and no matter the size of this supposed demon’s horns or the glow of their eyes, she’s gonna see it for herself.

“Your hubris is gonna be your downfall, babe,” Blake teases, casting their torch around them again. “Just you watch.”

“You know what else is gonna be my downfall?” Velvet asks, and then barrels on ahead before they can answer. “My impatience. C’mon, it’s getting late and I wanna cobble together the footage before tomorrow evening. Let’s get a wriggle on and see where we get to.”

* * *

“So, like I said -- or, like, _am going_ to say, in a voice-over -- this church was built by some good old Faunus heathens, because what else can you do in your spare time but make a whole building for you and your buddies to go and read some prayers? But my current, like, hypothesis is that since Blake and I are Faunus too, this supposed _demon_ might actually totally be chill with us!”

“What, like they’re gonna be going all like, _‘waaaargh-- oh, wait, you guys’re chill, come in, sit down, have some tea!’”_

“Firstly: hey, you never know. Secondly: no, I meant, like, maybe they won’t haunt our asses when they see we’re kinda heathens too! Besides, you’re more devout than me, so maybe you can sorta talk it down.”

“More devo-- I remember to leave offerings to the Hallows during the solstices! That doesn’t make me _devout,_ that makes me like every other Faunus particpating in the fuckin’ _spirit lottery.”_

 _“Spirit lottery,_ oh my _Gods--”_

“It’s true! Leave an offering, and maybe you, too, will have good luck for the year or maybe win a brand new Scroll!”

“Shit, dude, my family always forgets. That’s kinda ‘cause we’re tree people, though, so.”

“Terrible. Goat demon gon’ eat your ass for that.”

“They are _welcome_ to it! Might as yet get some action whilst I’m out here.”

“Okay, no, stop that.”

“Can’t make me stop! You said they’ll eat my ass and I say ple-- oh, shit. You see that?”

“See what? What am I looking at?”

“Right over there, see? Is that the steeple?”

“That’s like the _third_ time you’ve said tha--”

“...”

“...”

“Is it, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Think that’s the steeple, Velv.”

* * *

Just between a break in the trees, where the last of the sunset is fading into a pure obsidian black, there’s a shape, tall and stark against the darkening sky. It’s too angular to be another tree, and too wide to be a bare trunk, and Velvet feels a weird flutter of surprise when she manages to get it into full view for the first time, angling the camera to capture it fully. “Well, shit. There it is.”

Blake steps up beside her, ducking under a low-hanging bough, and they both stare at the steeple for a long moment. Behind them, there’s a shift in the thicket, and all of their ears pique towards it before Blake shakes their head. “Wow. Can’t believe you were actually onto something out here.”

“Well, there had to be _something._ Just didn’t expect it to be so close, honestly.” Standing on the tips of her toes, Velvet lowers the camera to try and get a better look, head canting to the side. “Still can’t hear any music or whatever. Guess that’s off the cards, huh?”

“No music _yet.”_

Rolling her eyes, Velvet nudges at Blake’s shoulder as they laugh, a twig snapping under their feet when they sidestep her next little punch, and they look to her with a smile and golden eyes-- before their face drops and they yelp, ducking down and almost crashing into the trunk of the tree beside them as they stumble backwards. 

Velvet’s heart leaps straight into her mouth, and she turns on her heel to cast her torch across the bushes behind her, expecting horns and glowing eyes to be breathing right down her neck… only to see nothing but the forest staring right back at her.

“Fuck me, Blake! What, did I push you that hard?” Velvet gasps out, turning around with a hand on her heart, pulse thundering in her ears. “Scared the goddamn shit out of me!”

Blake heaves out a breath, shaking their head with an airy giggle as they push themself upright again, glancing around the trees with an erratic shift of their light. “No, there was-- there was a fuckin’ bat, swooped down right behind your head. Thought it was gonna crash right into you.”

Looking up, Velvet scans the treeline suspiciously for any fast-flying creatures, but there’s very little to see save for the slow emergence of stars that hang high above, twinkling in and out. “Well, maybe it’s an omen. Guess we should get closer before one manages to take my head clean off my shoulders.”

“Yeah,” Blake mumbles, and when Velvet offers her elbow, they take it with a grateful smile, hauling themself upright. “Let’s go see what all the fuss is about.”

* * *

“Okay, we’re now approaching the church--”

“Neither of us have heard any fun chanting or spotted any glowy eyes yet, either.”

“Nor seen any horns or, like, cloven hooves, but there’s still time if they wanna make a surprise guest appearance.”

“Hello? Goat demon? Helloooooooo--”

“Hey, goat demon! I’m in your forest, goat demon! My forest now!”

“Oh my Gods--”

“I mean, given most people said the goat demon was either near or _in_ the church itself, they might not actually be anyway near us right now. We’re close, but not, like, _that_ close.”

“Yeah, but don’t people go missing in these woods or some shit? Maybe the demon wandered off and took ‘em for a laugh.”

“Please, I’m pretty sure in every single woodland or forest under the dang _sun_ somebody’s gone missing! That doesn’t make it _special,_ that just makes the people who wander off the trail _idiots.”_

“Oh, like us? Right now?”

“W-well, yeah, dude, I’m not exactly sayin’ we’re the smartest cookies in the biscuit barrel right now--”

“I mean, that’s fair.”

“Point being, local legend says this demon was summoned by the Faunus _heretics,_ who were then murdered by said demon. Thoughts on that?”

“We don’t _have_ demons in our mythology! We can’t even summon ‘em if we tried!”

“Good point, well made. Still, people think the sudden disappearance of the little congregation here means they might have all died at once, so even if we don’t see a demon -- which is, as stated before, unlikely -- we might get lucky enough to see a ghost if the story holds wate-- Blake?”

“...”

“Hey, what’s up? Saw something?”

“... I--”

“Babe?”

“I’m not tryna be funny or anything, but do you, like… can you hear that?”

“Hear what? The wind?”

“No, no, like… it’s really faint, but…”

“...”

“...”

“You-- oh my Gods, I swear--”

“Are you not hearing tha--”

“I do! I do, oh my _Gods,_ this fuckin’ _sucks--”_

“If you, the viewers, can’t quite hear that, Velv and I can now hear music in the distance.”

“Yeah, fuck, yeah, like… it sounds like a woman singing? Or some shit? Just _barely.”_

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we might actually fuckin’ die to this shit.”

“Y’know what-- _fuck this,_ dude, I’m marchin’ over there right now. There’s no _way_ this isn’t some dipshit with a boombox--”

“You’re gonna die.”

“I don’t give a shit! C’mon!”

* * *

With every slow trudge they make towards the steeple, the music grows louder, and soon it evolves from a distant hum in the wind to a distinguishable tune.

Velvet’s suspicion of a boombox feels kinda sound until some words become a little more legible, and when Blake pauses to quietly murmur that the lyrics are not in Valian, but in Akadyan -- their native tribal tongue -- Velvet’s stomach just about drops out of her ass and onto the forest floor. She’d hoped the song would be mainstream enough to be blamed on a radio or something, but hearing weird Faunus singing near a weird Faunus church haunted by a weird Faunus-summoned demon is not stacking up the cards in her favour, and when they climb their way over a sizeable waterlogged ditch, Velvet becomes alarmingly aware with the prickling of her palms and tension in her shoulders that she’s actually getting sort of nervous now.

Then, right as the trees begin to thin out and Velvet thinks she can see the rest of the church start to come into view, levelling her camera to catch the reveal, Blake swears so loudly that Velvet nearly sheds her own skin out of fear. “Fuck! What?! What is it?!”

Blake’s brought their hand over their mouth, staring off towards the church with wide eyes, and the torchlight causes their eyes to glow a ghostly green, unblinking, unmoving. “Gods, Velvet, look, there’s a fucking _light--”_

Whipping about, Velvet squints off towards the distance before she crouches low to better see past the heavy branches that still obscure the clearing ahead, and Blake’s not wrong; flitting past the leaves, glittering and out of sight, she can just about make out a bright yellow light that gazes back to her. At first, she’s hoping it’s just a reflection off her torch from discarded glass, maybe, or perhaps a reflective sign left abandoned in the woods, but even as she flicks it off for a moment, it neither shifts nor dims, but hovers above the ground steadily. Blake lowers themself beside her, staring off towards it like they’re waiting for the light to blink first, and their little chuckle comes out very wobbly. “Bet you that’s not even a fucking ghost. It’s gonna be a fuckin’ mass-murderer just sitting in an old church waiting for our merry asses to walk on in.”

Velvet groans, and she hates that they’re almost certainly right. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe _Sun_ was right. When I die I’m haunting him forever, the fucker.”

“Oh, bood,” Blake murmurs, and Velvet glances down to her camcorder as she toys with the strap, pondering their survival chances if she can improvise a weapon fast enough.

“Well,” she starts, and then sighs. “I guess this is, like, the best-case scenario for this video anyway. We’ll at least have footage for the next big horror film, yeah?”

Standing up, she brushes dirt and debris from her trousers before she offers Blake a hand, her datemate blearily glancing up with a grimace. “Let’s go get eaten by a demon, partner. Can’t quit now.”

“Yes, we can,” they grumble, though they still take her hand in theirs anyway, and Velvet laughs.

* * *

“So, quick recap: we’re approaching a church that was built by a bunch of Faunus who apparently summoned a _goat demon_ that killed them all, and we’ve now heard a woman singing in Akadyan -- which is a tribal tongue for those of you who don’t know shit--”

“Sorry to all the human viewers.”

“--And now, just to, like, top it off, there’s _lights on_ in the fucking _abandoned church._ So, even though all of this is absolutely screaming _bad news_ and also _axe-murderer_ or some shit, we’re now entering this little clearing here for our first proper look at the church.”

“Here’s the good news: we haven’t heard any, uh, disembodied footsteps yet, or seen any weird glowy eyes that aren’t, y’know, Velvet’s--”

“And we haven’t seen any horns, either! To be perfectly frank, my ass is absolutely clenched just waiting for any to actually pop up--”

“Ugh, me too. This is like, maybe the worst idea we’ve ever had, and it _sucks.”_

“Don’t gotta tell me that. Anyway, let’s just step out past here and-- ow, shit, that hurt.”

“You alright?”

“Some of these thorns are longer than my fingers, yeesh. They’re forming a nice little, like, barricade of _bullshit.”_

“That’s a good line.”

“Thanks, I-- oh, woah.”

“What is i-- oh. Wow.”

* * *

Velvet wasn’t sure what to expect when Sun said the church had been built by a ragtag bunch of Faunus out in the middle of the forest. The steeple was already impressive enough, but whatever she was anticipating -- a weird cabin or an impressively-rooved hut -- isn’t quite what she finds.

Outside of the creepy singing (which hasn’t stopped, and has, in fact, only gotten louder) and the lights on inside the arched windows (still bright and unrelenting, lighting up the clearing in a soft glow), the church is bigger than she’d thought it would be, and surprisingly well-built. The steeple is even taller now that she’s seeing it up close -- much taller than imagined -- and the windows of the church are still intact, a sizeable, circular window of painted glass set above the solid wooden doors inside. It’s showing signs of wear and tear, sure -- some of the more intricate stonework has been worn down by pelted rain, and the plantlife surrounding it has grown wild and free, ivy attempting to clamber up towards the roof, flowers scaling the dark brickwork. Yet, as Velvet looks about with a careful eye, she can’t help but feel that things aren’t quite as… _abandoned_ as they should be.

“Look,” Blake murmurs as they both step closer, barely a stone’s throw from the walls of the church, and their torch lights up the wooden doors for a moment. “The pathway there looks pretty recently used, and the bushes, by the stairs… they look like they’ve been hacked back.”

They’re right; the stairs leading up to the doors have two tall, bud-speckled bushes either side, but they’ve been chopped at an angle to clear the way, and bits of them are still scattered on the forest floor. That’s not the only weird thing that they notice, either, because when Velvet surveys the roof with a squint, something else strikes her. “The roof’s in, like, really good condition too. Hasn’t even lost a slate.”

Something isn’t clicking right, Velvet levelling the camera towards the building as she walks closer, trying to figure out what’s vibing all oddly, but then Blake freezes up beside her, eyes wide, and their quiet inhale is choked down with a gasp.

“What is it?” Velvet asks, turning around to look at them with a furrowed brow. “You see something?”

Blake nods silently, pupils glowing green in the reflected light, and they point towards one of the bigger windows with a shaking hand, jaw set. “Yeah. What the fuck is _that?”_

Turning on her heel, Velvet scans the windows along the side of the church, holding her camera high to capture what she sees. They’re simply-made, focusing on functionality over any ornate nature, and she struggles to spot what they’ve seen. The church is set upon solid stone foundations so the angle forces her to only really be able to see the ceiling inside, heavy wooden beams supporting a second floor above, and there’s nothing of any real note in any of them. After the third attempt to spot, well, _anything,_ Velvet’s just about to ask Blake to specify when something shifts in one of the windows, just a little, just enough to draw her eye, and in the same moment that Velvet realises what she’s seeing, the singing -- which had filled with clearing like an ethereal lure -- stops.

Two tall, jagged goat horns appear by the far window for a second, turning around just enough for Velvet to know that the owner is looking directly at them, and then they disappear downwards in a flash of movement.

Velvet nearly drops the camera. “You are fucking _joking me!”_

The shout escapes her before she can even think to swallow it down, and Blake’s hand clamps over her mouth to shut her up, hissing wordlessly in her ear as they drag her backwards towards the thicket, out of the circle of light. Yet, the moment Velvet thinks it, the light in the rear of the church cuts out all at once, plunging half the small clearing into darkness.

“They’re coming,” Blake almost snarls, and when the horns reappear in another window -- getting ever closer to the doors -- Velvet squeals and backpedals them both into the bushes, both of them almost crashing down into their asses as, in the distance, a groan of old wood and older hinges echoes out across the forest. The doors are opening now, light spilling out across the pathway to bathe the dirt beyond in a warm, yellow glow, and they wail as they’re pushed open wide, leaving a dark shadow to be slashed across the ground like a stroke of ink, long and curling horns exaggerated to monstrous extremes. Velvet isn't sure how much of this is getting picked up by the camera and what’s covered up by leaves and foliage, but it’s not really her concern right now, not when Blake’s grip over her mouth is almost painfully tight.

“We’re so dead,” Blake whispers, eyes flicking about as they search for an exit, an escape, trying their best to stay obscured in the bushes. “We’re _so_ dead!”

Velvet doesn’t doubt it for a second, not when she can see a figure step out of the doorway, the doors pushed shut behind them and leaving them shrouded in shadows. From where they’re hiding for their lives, she can’t really make out very many details, but there’s enough for her to have a pretty decent image in her head even if it’s just a silhouette. A long robe flutters down to their ankles, catching the midnight breeze and billowing out like a cloak, and when they cast their gaze about, descending down the stairs with slow, deliberate steps, Velvet can see the unnerving orange glow people have written about in fear, pinpricks of candlelight in the distance. Atop their head are the goat horns of legend, tall and curling behind their crown like a pair of bladed hooks, whilst a toss of their head causes dark hair -- smokelike and pitch-black -- to brush past their shoulders. They haven’t looked directly to their bushes yet, still watching the area in front of the church for any motion, and Velvet can hear both Blake’s heartbeat and her own thundering away in her chest, waiting for a moment to run.

Well, that’s before a voice rings out and Velvet nearly shits herself, flinching so hard that Blake throws an arm across her shoulders to pin her in place, sweat dripping down their forehead. “Hello?”

Neither of them are quite stupid enough to reply, and when the demon cants their head and hears nothing, they turn around and begin to pace closer towards them, eyes still glancing over the forest, Blake’s fingers tightening on Velvet’s shoulder. Had they been seen? Could this demon see right though them? Velvet should have written up her will before she did this, for fuck’s sake--

“Yeah, you, uh, didn’t turn your torches off.”

Velvet blinks, looks down, and she and Blake both stare at the light currently shining extremely brightly onto the inside of the brambles they’ve squashed in their attempt to hide away. Very sedately, Blake clicks theirs off, and the demon sighs before treading closer still, fearless.

“Look, if you’ve gotten lost, there’s a path right there you can follow back onto the main road outta here. Dunno why on Remnant you’re pissing about in a forest at, like, almost _midnight,_ but whatever.”

Once they’re close enough to be outside the light of the church, Velvet’s dark-adjusted eyes can actually see a little more of them, and now she can register actual details rather than just a blocky shadow. Their glowing orange eyes are actually more of a solid amber, a little bit like Blake’s, and the long robes they’re wearing are actually… well, it’s a bathrobe, actually, tied loosely around the waist and covering up a pair of pyjamas. They’re golden-skinned and speckled with dark moles, a little scar across the corner of their mouth, and they’re actually quite a bit shorter than they seemed in their shadow or on the stairs, arms knotted across their chest and mouth twisted in a frown, looking down at their hiding place with a foot tapping impatiently against the ground.

Embarrassingly, it’s only now that everything slots together.

Velvet stands up so fast that Blake is otherwise hauled up with her, the shrubbery crunching and cracking under their weight, and Velvet tugs Blake’s hand away from her mouth as the demon stumbles back a step, arms raising as though ready to throw a punch. “Oh!” Velvet says, and then laughs. “You _are_ a Faunus!”

The demon-- sorry, the _Faunus_ cocks their head to the side, their horizontal pupils only mildly unsettling, and they look at Velvet’s foot-and-a-half long hare ears before glancing to Blake’s smaller feline ears and slitted pupils, frown dropping to favour pure confusion. “Uh, no shit?”

Blake looks mortified, probably only just realising it themself, and when they facepalm, the slap echoes off around them like a gunshot, groaning out one long note of humiliation. “Oh, my gods, I fuckin’-- we are _so_ sorry to intrude on you, Velvet’s a fuckin’-- she makes dumb videos for the web--”

“They’re not dumb!” Velvet yelps, whacking Blake on their shoulder hard enough for them to actually wince from the impact. “I just-- I sometimes go to, like, abandoned places and stuff, and we heard there was a story-- just, like, a stupid myth about a _goat demon_ in this old church, and we didn’t think it was real, and then we did ‘cause you--”

Velvet makes little horns with her fingers, hoping to communicate her gist, and the other Faunus has been raising an impeccably arched brow the entire time she’s been word-vomiting until the scarred corner of their mouth quirks upwards, blooming into a bright, toothy grin. “You came out here to get cool haunted footage and didn’t know a person lives in it now, right?”

Velvet’s embarrassment turns into relief, coming out in the form of a long, shuddering breath. “Yes! We-- we had _no clue_ someone was actually out here, so we kinda stumbled our way here and… yeah.”

The Faunus chuckles under their breath, tugging their bathrobe tighter around their shoulders, and then they look to Velvet’s camera -- still held in her hands, still rolling. “Well, sorry to ruin your video, but I bought this church and the land it’s on a while ago. This place has been in renovation hell for six months now.”

“Hell?” Blake asks, and Velvet almost wants to point out the potential joke -- goat demon, goat Faunus, renovation hell, etc. Still, the shorter Faunus nods and sighs, motioning upwards towards the pristine roof with a wave of their hand.

“Trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted to come here when it was a wreck. The last storm Vale had caved half the roof in about a week after I bought it, so I got all the fun of reconstructing that. Still, it’s pretty nice inside, if you wanna take a look.”

Velvet had been so busy looking polite and not at all like a stupid vlogging trespasser she is that the Faunus’s last few words almost fly right over her head, and when they do, eventually, register in all four of her ears, she smiles more on reflex than out of anything else. “Sorry?”

The other Faunus blinks, and then shrugs like their reasoning is very obvious. “You trampled you way right through the prickliest part of this forest to see this church and you might as well get what you came for, even if it’s a lot lighter and cleaner than you might’ve planned.” Then, they blush and look away, eyebrows furrowing. “I mean, you can pass if it’s creepy, I won’t blame you. ‘Least I could do is give you a lift out of here otherwise.”

Pointing a thumb over their shoulder, Blake tries to give them a reassuring grin -- it’s still a little too wonky to be anything over than a fearful, nervous, embarrassed wreck, but it’s an attempt. “Nah, it’s cool, our car is, uh, just over…”

The Faunus raises their brow again, looking over their shoulder at the dense undergrowth they’d clambered through, and Blake’s words wither in their throat. “Just, um, over… yeah, actually, that wouldn’t be so bad.”

Chuckling again, the shorter Faunus offers Velvet a hand, and with a surprisingly strong grip they tug Velvet free of the branches, taking a moment to brush off the leaves and the pieces of crushed briar from her clothes. “Look, how about you come inside, I’ll make you some tea and get dressed, and then I’ll give you a lift to your car? I can tell you about the church too, though you probably know more than I do.”

“That’d be really kind of you, thanks.” As Velvet speaks, the Faunus helps pull Blake free of the bushes too, and they both really do look like they’d been dragged backwards and upside down through a bunch of hedges, Blake’s hoodie littered with thorns and twigs that get picked out by two pairs of hands. “I’m Velvet, by the way, and that’s Blake.”

“Nice to meet you, circumstances notwithstanding,” the goat Faunus replies with a wry grin. “I’m Cinder, Cinder Fall, and this is my house and home, although it seems I’m also working part-time as a demon now?”

Giggling, Velvet looks back to her camera, ending the recording with a tap of a button and closing the viewfinder with a snap. It might not have the ending she was expecting, but maybe if she takes some pictures inside, she’ll at least be able to use the video to ensure other paranormal fans don’t come bothering Cinder in the future. “Yeah, well. Guess we all gotta keep busy somehow, huh?”

Cinder rolls their eyes, and their sizeable horns swing around as they turn to lead the way towards the church, motioning for them both to follow with a wave. “Well, this demon has a really good tea blend, so if you’re interested, have at it.”

Velvet looks to Blake, who shrugs a few times in confusion, and then she makes to follow Cinder’s path, almost towering a good head and a half over them had their horns not added over a foot of height to their own stature. Part of her is still _very_ confused about this whole situation, whilst another part is a little disappointed that she’s missed her window. A different part, however, which she’s trying very hard to ignore, is busy saying _‘hey why is the goat person hot??? hello???’_ So, in a fit of eagerness to not look weird, Velvet attempts a joke. “Well, I guess it’s cool so long as you’re not actually a, like, goat witch tryna keep us in your pretty little home, right?”

Cinder pauses, and then when they laugh out loud, bright and warm and reassuring, most of Velvet’s hesitations melt away in an instant. “I _suppose_ you’re cute enough to, but alas, I’m just fond of good tea. It’s an Akadyan blend, if you’re familiar.”

That makes Blake hurry right up, appearing next to Cinder’s other side like some sort of a summon, staring down at her with big, hopeful eyes, and for a moment Velvet wonders if maybe she _is_ a witch of some kind. “I am!”

“Ah, I thought so.” Cinder smiles again, tossing their hair back and making Velvet have to duck to avoid the point of a horn. “I’ll get a pot on whilst the two of you get dethorned, hm?”

Honestly, it’s probably a better plan than Velvet’s had for a while.

* * *

“So, in a surprising twist ending, it turns out that now there’s a goat Faunus by the name of Cinder living in the church!”

“She gave us very nice tea, and wasn’t an axe murderer. And she gave us a lift, too.”

“Yeah, we had a nice little sit and she basically told us about how she bought the land but felt like tearing down the church would be a shame, so she did it all up and now it’s, like, her house now, I guess.”

“Got some really nice styling to it, too, very aesthetic--”

“Very, like, showroom-esque?”

“Yeah, but that’s ‘cause she’s only been properly living in it for a few weeks now.”

“Mm-hm! So, she told us that any _super_ recent reports of singing or lights were her bad--

“Her singing _is_ very nice, though--”

“--And that she didn’t even know there were any stories of goats or demons to even begin with! She appreciated the irony, though, so, all’s well that ends well?”

“The most unlikely end to this mystery.”

“I know, right? We solved the mystery, and it wasn’t a goat demon, but a goat _Faunus_ who now lives in the middle of the woods in an old church now, I guess.”

“Still, she saved all the books and everything, and even a big ol’ statue of Dacite too--”

“Yeah, she’s taken good care of it, and I did take some footage of the statue and stuff. She was also very kind and sent me some photos of before the renovations, before the roof collapsed in and everything, so this wasn’t even all that fruitless.”

“I mean, it wasn’t fruitless for other reasons too.”

“Erm, yeah, I mean... it’s not every day a lady living in the woods gives you tea and a lift and also her number and maybe also a date? Guys, a _lot_ happened last night, I gotta say--”

“At least Cinder found the whole thing hilarious.”

“I guess, like-- once I was past the bit where I was mortally embarrassed, it _was_ kinda funny. But, um, yeah! That’s what we found out! There _was_ a creepy old church, and now it’s _not_ a creepy old church, and there never _was_ a goat demon to begin with, but now there _is_ a goat Faunus who would like everyone to know that if you wanna visit, there _is_ a proper pathway and please don’t do what we did and go off the beaten track to get there. It hurt. Like, a lot.”

“She was pretty hot though.”

“Don’t say that! What if she’s watching!”

“She gave us her number and _invited us out for dinner--”_

_“That doesn’t mean you can call her hot in my video--”_

“I may as well! How else are you gonna conclude this video? I don’t think either of us even know what happened!”

“Don’t ask me! I just go places and have things happen _to_ me.”

“Mood. I guess the real haunting was the gay inside our hearts or something.”

“To be honest? You’re absolutely right.”

* * *

Cinder’s sat in her very nice home -- a church, once, that came with the land she’s bought and that she couldn’t bear to tear down after all the work that had been put into keeping it standing -- with music playing in her living room, flicking through the TV channels as she keeps her Scroll pressed to one cheek, waiting for the person on the other end to pick up her call. It’s been a few hours since two -- very cute, might she add -- Faunus stumbled out of the forest whilst hunting for footage of a hysterious goat-horned demon that apparently had been spotted in the area for a good few years now, and Cinder finds the irony so hilarious that she’s kinda hoping someone else will potter along for the same reasons if only so she can scare them shitless.

Still, it was a stroke of good luck, if she might say so herself; one of them, Blake, is tall and dark and handsome, with golden eyes and a nervous smile, sharing the same Akadyan tongue that Cinder had learnt from her mother. The other -- the concocter of this plan, Velvet -- was just as tall but broader of shoulder, with tawny hair and tawnier hare ears, freckled and adorable and she’d spluttered out apology after apology nearly fifty times, as if Cinder hadn’t forgiven them already out of good humour. She’d given them both tea -- one that Blake had recognised in an instant and chugged down just as easily -- before she’d answered as many of Velvet’s questions as she could, telling her as much about the history as she remembered. In all honesty, Velvet had known more than Cinder had ever managed to gather on her own, but it’d been fun to have her first _real_ visitors, even if she maybe needed to stick up a few signs pointing to the actual path.

And, well, they were very nice to look at and talk to and so when Cinder had driven them back to their car on the other side of the thicket, she’d casually invited them to, y’know, dinner. And exchanged numbers. As you do.

Her Scroll rings again, still waiting for an answer, and she counts it out once, twice, thrice, before there’s a click on the other end and Emerald’s sleepy voice comes through the speaker. “Cinder? What the fuck, it’s eight in the morning--”

“Emerald, you’re not gonna believe this,” Cinder interrupts before she can lose her own train of thought, smile wide and eyes ablaze. “Guess which local legend just landed me a date?”

**Author's Note:**

> IT WAS CINDER WE WERE JOKING ABOUT CINDER PISSING ABT IN THE WOODS AND SCARING PPL BECAUSE THAT'S JUST WHAT SHE DOES
> 
> Thanks for reading!!! If you enjoyed this inexplicably stupid fic, please leave some kudos and maybe a comment! You can also locate my own goat-demon-lovin self over at faunusrights.tumblr.com!


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